Week#1 Prototype

On Day1 at CFC, we were sitting in a circle and talking about our thesis idea. Ana Serrano, founder of CFC Media Lab gave each of us some suggestions for the prototype.

Ana recommendations for me:

Interested in VR shared space but prototype already built puts other users in AR space, why? Assumption is that single player VR dominant for a while and therefore finding other ways of engaging audience. How to design for mixed audience and shared experience between both groups?

Perhaps focus on role between those inside and outside of headset?

Need to look at rationale before playing with technology.

Ana’s suggestions are really useful. So for this rounds of prototyping, I am thinking to put aside the technical parts for a moment and really focused on the actual experiences and contents for my thesis based on the fact that I have already made a very basic functional prototype with the communications between AR and a headset. But I am lack of the context and experiences, which is the core soul of an interactive art project.

On Day2 at CFC, I am planning to do the following for my prototype and we were also writing topics on our poster and to see the suggestions from my cohorts.

Sketch out different experiences of user flows for HMD wearer and other audiences to figure out what possible interactions could be and add to my design process.

Think Aloud Testing to test out if the interactions will be applicable to add into the experience.

Prototype suggestions from my cohorts

Suggestions from my corhorts:

Role Play

Use case Diagram

Storyboard

Charades

Ask people if they would use your concept

Concept testing to get ideas of interations people would want

Storyboarding for a multi-player game people who is wearing VR and people who is not, need to work together to complete a goal. Observe the interations between them.

Asymmetric design

Hapic feedback

Think of physical interactions between person in + persons out

So based on the suggestions from my cohorts, I am thinking to design a physical game to test out the relationships and possible interactions between HMD wearer and other audiences. Here is my prototype map:

My Prototype Mindmap

Physical Game Sketch

Day3 at CFC, prototyping a physical game:

Split my classmates into a group of three people, person A to be a player, person B to be an interrupter, person C to be a commander. Each round lasts for 3 minutes. If person A reached the destination, commander win. If person A didn’t reach the destination, interrupter win. Switch the positions for three times.

Person A – Player: You will be blindfolded and you need to reach out to the destination by the commands made by the commander, you can completely trust him/her and they will make you safe.

Person B – Interrupter: You are allowed to make sounds, move chairs around and touch person A. Your goal is to try your best to prevent Person A to reach the destination.

Person C – Commander: You need to make clear commands to person A and help him/her to reach the destination. Your responsibility is to make person A safe and don’t make him/her stumbled and fall down.

Round 1

Player: Sana

Commander: Jad

Interrupter: Feng

Q: Have you tried VR before? Is it reminding you about a VR experience?

A: Jad: It reminded me of cars getting to an intersection. But for VR, no.

Sana: Yes, it makes me feel like when I have a headset and I have no idea what’s going on in the real world. It is like it would be a situation that I need to move in VR and also move physically.

Feng; For me, I feel like I am not the person who is in the VR but I feel like I am the person who is watching the people playing VR. I don’t know what should I do properly to that person

Q to Feng: What do you think the most effective action you did to prevent Sana to reach her destination?

A from Feng: Moving chairs around to stuck Sana. But I am not sure if I am allowed to touch her or move her to comfuse her of the right direction. I feel like it could be interesting if Sana doesn’t know who is the commander, I can fake the commands.

Q to Sana: What is the most difficult part for you in the entire process?

A from Sana: I think the worst scenario would be the commander don’t have vocal cues and only through touch that would be very difficult. For now, I can filter out what Feng was doing just focus on Jad’s voice.

Round 2

Player: Emma

Commander: Quinn

Interrupter: Sana

Q to Emma: Have you tried VR before? Is this game remind you of VR?

A from Emma: Yes, I have. Yeah, the display of it for sure.

Q to Emma: What is the most difficult part for you to reach the final destination?

A from Emma: When the vision is gone, to completely trust Quinn’s command.

Q to Quinn: What more help you wish to have to help Emma’s to reach the destination?

A from Quinn: Maybe tell her what in front of her, so she feels safer. Use more clear commands. I wish I can figure what the left and right to her instead of myself.

Q to Sana: What more you wish you can do to interrupt?

A from Sana: I felt like I interrupted a lot, but at some point I was like ok that’s enough. I think vocally to interrupt is important because again that’s the only connection they have.

Round 3

Player: Ramona

Commander: Max

Interrupter: Chris

Q to Ramona: Have you tried VR before? Is it remind you of any VR experiences?

A from Ramona: Yes I have. I feel like when I hit something, it’s like the same feeling. When in VR, I know there are targets that I know which I can interact with, but for this I am completely blind.

Q to Ramona: What is the most difficult part for you to reach the final destination?

A from Ramona: There are so many voices in this space including Max and Chris, I just want to focus. And there are so many things happened, I don’t know what’s the cord was. I just have no idea of what are all around me.

Q to Chris: What do you think the most effective action you did in the whole process?

A from Chris: I think the physical opticals, because everything else she can use her intelligence to figure out. If I’m trying to be very loud, she can just focus more on Max’s command

Q to Chris: What more thing you wish you can do to interrupt?

A from Chris: Very loud voices. A bucket of water will thrill her out. Spinning around her. A room can spin would be wonderful. If everything Max said was a lie. A score system for me, more tasks for her.

Q to Max: What the most effective way you did to help her to get the final destination?

A from Max: I feel like the direction commands are the best. If we can make a code communication system to make my command as succinctly as it could be.

Q to Max: What more thing you wish you can do to help the process?

A from Max: A secret signal only between me and Ramona that Chris would have no ideas what we were talking.

Round 4

Player: Ana

Commander: Emma

Interrupter: Dikla

Q to Ana: Have you tried VR before? Is it remind you of any VR experiences?

A from Ana: Yes, but not at all.

Q to Ana: What is the most difficult part for you to reach the final destination?

A from Ana: No I don’t find it’s difficult because of the commands that coming from Emma.

Q to Ana: What other thing you wish you could have to get the final destination?

A from Ana: Maybe a stick so I can anticipate what are the things in font of me.

Emma: I think It’s interesting that you build strategies very quickly to keep yourself safe. One of thing is the speed of you moved and how you moved. There are couple of moments I thought I didn’t give you enough signals.

Ana: The one thing I found difficult is not knowing if it’s Emma’s left or my left.

Q to Dikla: What are the most effective ways you did to stop Ana to get to the final destination?

A from Dikla: The physical space, once where she doesn’t know where am I, she will slow down. The physical touch will not be comfortable.

Emma: At the end It’s about your interactions with each other, not really about what I said and the boundaries. It’s interesting to see what it is shifting.

Q to Emma: What other things you wish you could have to help to guide Ana to the destination?

A from Emma: I think I should establish whose left at the beginning and that would be helpful. More intensive of the opticals to guide Ana through chairs. Once the physical interactions happened, it start to change the dynamic and responsibility of me.

Ana: If you make a constrain like every time I touched chairs, I would get punished or ask to stay for two seconds, because these physical barriers can be moved and I can pushed the interrupter. If every time I touch something and there is counter that would freak me out more and in this way I would listen more to the commander.

Emma: Do you think Yiyi should stay in this physical setup because these interactions could be produced in VR quite quickly. How to introduce Yiyi to VR test because she is interesting in the interactions between immerser and non-immersers.

Ana: I think the physical tasks actually worked. I would do one more time when the constrains are very tight. So it could be like when you have a timer, and I could hear tick-tack for a period of time, if I hit something I need to stay still. If you consider the most amount of constrains and that’s about the immerser and non-immersers. For example, the immerser will move when something fly to him/her.

Q to Ana: One of the things that allowing interrupter to touch is to test if it will be good to add haptic feedback into the interactions? Do you think it can work?

Ana: I don’t think it’s necessary. It instead reminds me a scifi movie about repeat moving patterns to fight aliens. That could be the key of the reparability of the whole experience of memorizing the spatial configuration.

Emma: You can always think about the feedback sense later once you situated how you want the feedbacks. Because the good things about body configuration that has enough signals. Putting the force feedback can happened a little bit later once you’ve figured out how the communications would be.

Ana: The cool thing is you are creating a collaborative play that all the three people need to come up with a strategy to cover up the whole space and merged.